I had one partition with windows vista installed on it, then i also installed linux mint which created a new partition. now i want to remove linux mint and its partition to get one partition with windows vista on it.
can any one please help me out.

12-31-2011

jonyo

any particular reason you just want 1 partition?

you could run a partition prog (free ones out there) in win then do whatever you like with the mint partition including making "one partition with windows vista on it."

depending what you are after can make a diff between easy or harder ways to go about it

real easy would be to just delete the mint partition then making it win compatible,

Are you simply wanting to remove Linux and assign the whole drive to Windows?
If so, then a tool like Parted Magic would work like a dream.
You would simply remove Linux and re-size the Windows partition. After that, you can use a Windows recovery disc to restore the bootloader.

Just make sure you make a back-up of any important data before doing so.

01-01-2012

Jonathan183

Parted Magic is a good choice, it will let you change partitions on the hard disc and will also allow you to fix the Windows boot after you remove the Linux partition (which is likely to be required if you installed grub as the bootloader as part of the Mint install). You may find that the Windows CD will not boot while grub is in the MBR of the hard drive, in which case Parted Magic can be used to fix this ...
if you want more specific help then post the output of

Code:

sudo fdisk -l

01-01-2012

richtimbo

Go here for more information: helpdeskgeek.com/how-to/fix-mbr-xp-vista/

Be sure to always backup your data in case anything goes wrong.

Vista gives you the tools to fix this, just do the following:

1. Using the Vista installation disk, boot up with the dvd.
2. Navigate to the screen where it asks to install now. Below, you will see where it asks you to Repair your computer. Select it.
3. Follow the prompts, selecting the version of windows that you want to repair using the Recovery Console. You may have to enter the Administrator Password to gain access to the drive.
4. At the command prompt, you can use bootrec.exe. This will fix the master boot record by removing the linux bootloader programs.
5. Now you can either use diskpart.exe to remove the linux partitions and expand the partition to cover the entire hard drive. Or you can restart windows and go to Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Computer Management, and Disk management. You can then remove the linux partitions using the mouse and right-click on your primary windows partition to reveal a menu that will allow you to shrink or expand the partition.

While it is nice to be able to dual boot with Windows or Linux, I have found that using VirtualBox.org is much easier, I could install linux and run it as a VM. These days though, I run VirtualBox for my Windows VM's as I now use a Linux Distro as my primary OS.

01-01-2012

click

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jonathan183

Parted Magic is a good choice, it will let you change partitions on the hard disc and will also allow you to fix the Windows boot after you remove the Linux partition (which is likely to be required if you installed grub as the bootloader as part of the Mint install). You may find that the Windows CD will not boot while grub is in the MBR of the hard drive, in which case Parted Magic can be used to fix this ...
if you want more specific help then post the output of

Code:

sudo fdisk -l

do i need administrative password to do this with parted magic?
my system have customised version of vista, will this still work?
and can you plz elaborate abit, it will be very helpful

01-01-2012

oz

Quote:

Originally Posted by click

do i need administrative password to do this with parted magic?

Hello and welcome! :)

No admin password is required when you run Parted Magic from a liveCD or liveUSB because it runs as root user by default.

01-01-2012

jonyo

1 Attachment(s)

Quote:

Originally Posted by click

do i need administrative password to do this with parted magic?
my system have customised version of vista, will this still work?
and can you plz elaborate abit, it will be very helpful

just be careful in parted magic, you can wreck vista and should have a backup

depends alot if you know what you are doing,

the safest way is to run a free partition prog in win, and just delete mint, then go from there

here's how it would look

01-01-2012

Jonathan183

As ozar pointed out, no admin password is required in Parted Magic live CD.
It should still work even with a custom version of vista.

A default install of Mint will install grub to the MBR, and setup dual boot with Windows available from the grub bootloader menu. Only part of the bootloader information is contained in the MBR with the rest of the information on the Linux partition so if you just delete the Linux partition the system will no longer boot. This can be fixed in several ways but the one I recommend is using SuperGrub - this is available on the Parted Magic CD so just having the Parted Magic CD gives you all the tools you need to change partitions and fix the Windows boot.

... you can find additional information on a number of sites including Supergrub, Parted Magic and you will find lots of examples of people having to fix Windows boot after removing a Linux partition on the forums and on the net in general ...

01-02-2012

click

thank you guys. i think i am gonna use parted magic as recommended by jonathan.